Think we're overreacting to end-to-end encryption laws in the EU

I was at a privacy conference in Berlin last March when a friend's Signal message got flagged for review by a local ISP. Turned out their VPN had a bug that leaked metadata, and suddenly I'm wondering if we're too focused on fighting encryption backdoors instead of making sure the tools we use actually work right. Maybe it's just me, but doesn't the real risk come from trusting buggy apps, not from the laws themselves? Has anyone else seen a tool fail like that while traveling?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavinm8920d agoMost Upvoted

There was a piece in Wired last month about how the encryption is usually solid but the apps themselves have all these little holes... metadata leaks, broken VPN tunnels, stuff like that. Makes you wonder if we're picking the wrong fight while the real problems are just hiding in plain sight.

tessa_kelly20d ago

@Gavinm89 that Wired piece nailed it... I've been noticing the same thing in my own life. Just last week my smart home hub suddenly dropped its VPN connection and exposed my whole network for like an hour before I caught it. Perfect encryption on paper, but the app crashed and left the door wide open. Makes you wonder if we're all so focused on fighting the big scary laws that we forget to check if our own tools are even working right. It's the same pattern everywhere - people buy fancy security software but never update it, or they use a password manager but reuse the same master password across sites. We're arguing about legislation while the everyday cracks in how we actually use this stuff just get bigger.